Climate Change and Mass Atrocities: Policy Brief, June 2024

Climate change has been recognized as one of the defining issues of our time due to the existential threat it poses to the environment and inhabitants of our planet, as well as its ability to exacerbate tensions between communities and multiply the threat of conflict and mass atrocity crimes. The crises and challenges arising from climate change – including the dramatic widening of inequality caused by climate emergencies, resource scarcity, environmental degradation and the political manipulation of access to resources – all pose a threat to vulnerable societies.

Although the international community has developed numerous mechanisms to adapt and respond to current and future climate threats, discussions on atrocity prevention and ways to respond to climate-related atrocity risks have been largely absent from these initiatives. As the international community examines how to slow environmental degradation and confront climate threats, it must also consider how to prevent and respond to atrocities driven by climate emergencies.

Building upon an event hosted by the Global Centre for the Responsibility to Protect and the European Union on 24 January 2024, this policy brief provides an overview of the different ways climate vulnerability and climate change can compound atrocity risks by examining the situations in Yemen, the Central Sahel (Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger) and the Lake Chad Basin, with a particular focus on Nigeria. This brief also describes and assesses several existing national and multilateral initiatives — across the humanitarian, development, finance and security sectors — that can be adapted and used to mitigate and address the growing threat of climate-related atrocity risks and crimes.